I’ve mentioned this a few times on our recent podcasts, but here’s the official press release from BookExpo America about next year’s Global Market Focus on translation:

Books in Translation: Wanderlust for the Written Word

BookExpo America has announced a new development for its 2014 Global Market Forum (GMF) program that is uniquely exciting by bringing a dedicated focus to books in translation. Leading US and international professionals that specialize in bringing the written word across languages will gather for a world summit on translation on Wednesday May 28th 2014, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, and in the following days at and around the book industry’s largest gathering in North America which will take place Wednesday, May 28th – Saturday, May 31st 2014.

BEA welcomes a host of prestigious partners that will develop the professional and cultural programs that make up the 2014 Global Market Forum: Books in Translation presented at BEA as well as various venues and institutions in the New York City area during BEA. These include the Literary Translation at Columbia Writing Program, PEN World Voices, Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester, the Association of Author Representatives (AAR), American Literary Translators Association, Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco as well as representatives of international markets promoting their countries’ literature in the US.

Books throughout history have been the vehicle for ideas and stories that transcend geography and cultures, reaching audiences far beyond a native land or language. Globalization and digitization bring new forces that are re-inventing the book trade and extending the possibilities for translations.

BEA is leading a collaborative effort from a variety of innovative organizations and experts in the sector to explore how these new opportunities can be turned into new business for authors, agents, publishers and translators.

Topics will include lessons learned from the recent success stories of translated authors, like the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson; explore how translated works can transcend from niche audiences to a large readership; debate best practices for making translations work – from English, as well as into English, and the help proposed from attractive funding programs. Marketing translations can now benefit from self-publishing to social media, by effectively managing interested target audiences, thereby facilitating the way to market for translated books.

“This is a logical evolution for BEA as international participation has outpaced every other segment at BEA aside from digital” says show organizer Steven Rosato. “While this is different for the GMF program, which typically focuses on a single country or region, providing a platform for books in translation is part of the long term future of BEA and will support future GMF programs and create more business opportunities for all BEA participants.”

As the week comes to a close, we at Open Letter Books are getting ready to join the masses of publishers, agents, authors, translators, and book people in general in for Book Expo America 2013.

In addition to getting ramped up to see familiar faces and meet new ones, we’ll be toting around a copies of a few of our forthcoming titles and plenty of shiny new catalogs to wave in your faces. And since we won’t be at a booth this year, we will instead be everywhere. In the book lines, at publishers’ booths, at snack-and-wine gatherings in the aisles, not not crashing evening parties/events/galas, in the whispers of the wind, in the rustling of exhibit floor curtains. In your free book totes and dreams.

Creepiness aside, we’ll basically be around all week and would love to see and talk to you! If you plan on being at BEA and want to catch us, shoot us an email, or check in with us on Twitter to see what we’re up to. (We may even have a few free A Thousand Morons shirts to hand out!) You can also use the same means of contact to avoid us. As an added bonus, Chad will be speaking on panels Wednesday at the Alternative and Independent Presses panel at 10:40 a.m., and Friday at the The Translator & Editor panel at 3:30 p.m.

Friend of Three Percent, Lisa Hayden Espenschade, who runs the incredible Russian literature blog Lizok’s Bookshelfposted the shortlist for the über-prestigious Big Book (Bol’shaya Kniga) Prize. Big Book is one of the “big three” Russian literary prizes, along with the Russian Booker and the National Bestseller (or NatsBest).

Our old Open Letter pal Mikhail Shishkin won the Big Book last year for his Letter-Book (Pis’movnik), with Vladimir Sorokin’s The Blizzard (Metel’) coming in second and Dmitry Bykov’s Ostromov, or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Ostromov, ili Uchenik charodeya) coming in third. The Big Book Prize fund distributes 6.1 million rubles (~$183k) annually among the first, second, and third prize winners, and is sponsored by a number of Russian businesses and banks along with the Russian Ministries of Culture and Print, Media and Mass Broadcasting.

There will be a Big Book Prize presentation event at Book Expo American next Thursday at 10am featuring past winners Mikhail Shishkin, Dmitry Bykov, Vladimir Makanin, Pavel Basinsky, and, supposedly, the Big Book finalists:The way the wording on Read Russia’s website describes the event (“Big Book Prize: Presentation of the Big Book Prize, Russia’s most prestigious literary award, plus a “Meet and Greet” with prize winners.”), I still can’t tell if they are really planning on announcing the 2012 Big Book winner at BEA, which would be awesome, or if they were just trying to present to an American audience the idea of the Big Book Award and will make the announcement for the prize winner in November, as stated in Russianmediareports.

The shortlist features a number of readers whom neither I nor Lisa have read, both of us are only familiar with Prilepin’s Black Monkey, so we have a lot to catch up on before the prizewinner is (allegedly) announced in November! Without any further ado, here is the shortlist, in English no less (!), with transliteration and translation provided by Lisa herself.

Maria Galina: Медведки (Mole-Crickets)

Daniil Granin: Мой лейтенант… (My Lieutenant . . .)

Aleksandr Grigorenko: Мэбэт. История человека тайги (Mebet. The Story of a Person from the Taiga)

Vladimir Gubailovsky: Учитель цинизма (The Teacher of Cynicism)

Andrei Dmitriev: Крестьянин и тинейджер (The Peasant and the Teenager)

Aleksandr Kabakov, Evgenii Popov: Аксёнов (Aksyonov)

Vladimir Makanin: Две сестры и Кандинский (Two Sisters and Kandinsky)

Sergei Nosov: Франсуаза, или Путь к леднику (Françoise, Or the Way to the Glacier)

A huge thanks to Lisa for her tireless work in alerting English readers to what’s going on in the world of Russian literature. Check out her posts for reviews and insider tips on what’s going on in the world of Russian literature, and I hope to meet her at BEA next week!

Next week, Book Expo America, “North America’s premier meeting of book trade professionals,” will take over the Javits Center in NYC. This year’s guest of honor at BEA is none other than RUSSIA, your humble author’s area of beloved expertise, and Russia will be the focus of a TON of super-cool events/panels/readings/parties as well as the “2012 Global Markets Forum” (aka: the business of books in and out of Russia, including my favorite Russian indie publisher, Ad Marginem Press!) all between June 2-7 as part of BEA’s READRUSSIA 2012 initiative.

According to the fine folks at READRUSSIA: “Russia’s 4,000-square-foot BEA exhibition space at the Javits Center will host presentations for industry professionals on the Russian book market, Russian literature in translation, and new works by Russian writers, publishers, historians, and journalists.”

Open Letter’s own Mikhail Shishkin, whose incredible English-language debut, Maidenhair, comes out October 13, will be one of the many contemporary Russian writers present at BEA. He’s part of a panel at 4:30 on Wednesday with Andrei Gelasimov, and will sit in on the presentation of the “Big Book” (Bol’shaya Kniga) Award Thursday at 10am.

Shishkin will also be doing a discussion with translator-extraordinaire Marian Schwartz and Open Letter publishing wizard Chad Post, hosted by The Bridge Series at McNally Jackson Books in SoHo on Thursday night at 7pm. So come and hang out with the Open Letter family at any of these awesome events and meet Shishkin, who is, from all accounts, a hilarious and awesome dude who speaks highly fluent English, so you don’t have to suffer through one of those awkward translator-trying-to-make-jokes-work moments. The good times will fly free.

Also, check out this bad boy under the Russian “Writers at BEA: Featured Writers” section:

WRITERS AT BEA
Featured Writers

Look familiar? Oh yeah, that’s not Mikhail Shishikin, nor is it Zakhar Prilepin, Dmitry Bykov, or any of the contemporary writers who will actually be at BEA, it’s our old friend Aleksandr Pushkin, who of course died 200 years ago, and who will only be present at BEA in the form of a tattooed portrait on my arm, but whose birthday we will allllll be celebrating on Wednesday in “true Russian fashion” (you can guess what that means)!

But READRUSSIA is a killer endeavor, filling the streets of NYC with some of the greatest living Russian writers (especially Shishkin and the mustachio’d Bykov and the intensity-in-ten-cities Prilepin, but I really really wish Mikhail Elizarov were there!), and giving the publishing world a much-needed glimpse into the Russia beyond the classics and outside of the overtly political commentary in Western media and literature about the country.

Check out a full list of READRUSSIA events all over NYChere or a list of all Russian-related events at BEAhere.

The annual meeting, set for New York May 29-31, will now also be held at New York’s Javits Center through 2012, a decision that scraps plans to hold BEA in Washington, D.C. in 2010 and in Las Vegas in 2011. And beginning next year, Reed will hold the convention entirely during the week under a compressed schedule.

While there have been no changes to the 2009 show, starting in 2010 BEA will run from Tuesday through Thursday, rather than its current configuration which begins with an education day on Thursday followed by exhibition hours running from Friday through Sunday.

And in terms of a public day:

“At this point, BEA is not looking to involve consumers in the show per se,” said [Lance] Fensterman. “However, we are interested in those people who influence book sales within the general population via channels that perhaps did not exist five years ago. So, in the short term, our focus will be on exploring initiatives to bring such influencers into the event but not the general population of consumers. This strategy may take on several different forms as it evolves but with only minor steps in 2009.”

Lance is a friend, a really sharp guy, and one of the people responsible for the New York Comic Con, which took place last week and was enormously successful.

More on NYCC in a minute, but what I find weird about these changes is that they essentially make BEAmore insular than it’s been in the past, rather than letting the expo evolve into something more dynamic and crucial to book culture.

Initially BEA (the trade show formerly known as ABA, short for American Booksellers Association) was a show primarily for and about booksellers. That’s changed a bit over time—publishers don’t take that many bookstore orders at the show, and as a result they cater a bit more toward reviewers, to generating hype. Fewer booksellers seem to walk the exhibition hall each year—which makes sense, since more publishers will be targeting them and sending catalogs, review copies, etc., to all these stores anyway—and instead spend more time at the panels and education seminars.

Beyond BEA though, most booksellers I talk to are really big on the Winter Institute, a separate show that’s only attended by fellow booksellers and a handful of publishers with enough cash to sponsor an event. (The imbalance of this and the disconnect between independent booksellers and independent publishers is a topic for a different post.)

Although everyone loves a publishing party, BEA seems to be becoming less and less important to booksellers as Winter Institute grows in stature. Which is great—the idea of having a huge show to hand out catalogs that you’ll bring to a store a week later does seem a bit redundant and wasteful.

By keeping BEA in the most expensive city in America for the next three years, I suspect that bookseller attendance will start (or continue?) to wane. And the stores in New York City? Probably the ones that benefit the least from a show like BEA since they’re right in the thick of things day-in, day-out.

So if the Winter Institute is more bookseller-centric, BEA should (in theory) be more publisher-centric. Which is sort of is. The best aspect of BEA is that it offers a chance for people from all parts of the book industry to get together, to talk excitedly about books, to exchange ideas in a lively, friendly environment.

And that’s great, although the amount of money, time, effort spent on this as attendance (from all sides) wanes, is starting to drag on the show. Too much time is spent writing about how foot-traffic on the exhibition hall seems slower than usual, that there’s no breakout book, that it may not be worth sending so many people next year, etc., etc. I mean, publishing people can be pretty whiny, but for an event that should be a celebration—for most it’s a chance to prove we’ve made it another year—it would be good if the focus was on all the great, energizing things that came out of BEA.

Basically, I think the expo needs to evolve, to become reenergized and essential, especially to publishers. And the best way I think that could happen is by starting to open this up to the public. Readers are the one segment of book culture that’s not at all represented at the fair, and also the one segment that we’re all supposedly in business for and because.

Almost every major book fair throughout the world—Frankfurt, Abu Dhabi, the Buenos Aires book fair (which is open on some nights till 4am!)—are open to the public at times. It’s a chance for publishers to get readers excited about upcoming books, and to sell some backlist titles that aren’t readily available in stores.

I suspect the big presses, the Simon & Schusters, would hate this idea, mainly because they really want to keep customers at arms length and love the insularity of an event that’s easy (in town), and attended primarily by businesses that they already deal with. (Customers are just messy.) And I’m sure this attitude has no effect on their recent struggles.

It seems really shortsighted, and quite frankly, dangerous, to resist some more progressive change for BEA . . . With a new focal point, BEA could become an even better show, and on that serves a very real—and hopefully profitable—purpose. This changes announced today, show that Reed Exhibitions is looking at the now defunct BEA Canada and trying to make adjustments to keep BEA relevant and alive, but these modifications just don’t go far enough.

(My sneaking suspicion is that allowing “influentials” into BEA—readers who tell other readers about books! what a concept!—is a way of getting big publishers to admit that there might be some benefit to letting in some part of the public. Baby steps, baby steps . . . Blow that door open Lance! Every reader is a potential influential!)

Granted, there’s a big difference between fan culture (like for comics or anime or whatever) and a literary reader, but nevertheless, there are interesting lessons to learn from reports about the NY Comic Con. Just a sampling:

The country may be reeling from the worst economy in years but you couldn’t tell it from the tens of thousands of fans pouring into the Jacob Javits Center for the fourth annual New York Comic-con this past weekend. The show opened on Friday afternoon to a respectable crowd after a morning of trade and professional presentations, but the fans showed up in force on Saturday—a sell-out for the day was announced on Friday—and the Javits Center was a beehive of enthusiasm and commerce. Reed Exhibitions v-p and NYCC show manager Lance Fensterman said this year’s show drew nearly 77,000 fans, up from the 67,000 attendees last year.

That’s more than a 15% increase in attendance . . . during a recession. Speaking of sales:

The logline for the show is definitely “What recession?” More than one person referred to the con as an “escape” from the realities of unemployment, and global deflation. Indeed, though many — The Beat included — feared that vendor sales would be dismal at the show, everyone we spoke with directly has had better than expected sales, and from the busy, bustling mood on the floor, you’d never know that January’s job numbers are going to be horrific.

Huh. You let people in, let them enjoy the work you’re doing, and they buy it—who would’ve thought?

Just to beat a dying horse, at the current time, there’s no possible way to register to attend BEA as a book lover. If you’re an “author” you need an ISBN. If you’re a “educator” you need to provide your principal’s name.

But for NY Comic Con, “consumers/fans” can get in for the whole weekend for $60, or for a single day for $40 (or $50). So, 77,000 paid approx. $4 million to Reed to attend the fair. That’s 77,000 people who attending presumably to buy comic books and graphic novels, and who are likely to spread the word about what they saw/bought/read to others. To recap: they spent considerable money to attend, spent money in the show, and then told others to spend money. (And I’ll assume a lot of people got really excited about one project or another and is currently spreading the word . . . )

There’s no way this would happen for BEA, but if it did? If 77,000 people showed up to talk about and buy books? Wouldn’t that be the sort of activity that could help increase reading in America? Isn’t that what we’re all in this business for?

(One quick note: booksellers might object to the idea of publishers selling directly to customers in this grand, publicized fashion. I think there are ways to work this out, maybe even benefit bookstores—like giving out sample chapters of a forthcoming book with a refund coupon for x% off if the reader buys the book at an independent bookstore—but this post is way, way too long already.)

Anyone who knows me (or who read any of my Words Without Borders blog postings), knows that I’m pretty honest about the dorky side of book people. We can’t dance, we generally don’t dress very well, our hip parties are probably the lamest of the media/entertainment industry, and we’re generally pasty folk. Some of us get geeked about BookExpo America, but when trying to explain to the outside world why we think this is cool, we generally fall short.

The equivalent BEA for librarians is the American Library Association annual conference. Which I’ve never been to, but have often been curious about. What do librarians do when they get together away from home? Are they as social awkward as publishing people? Do they stay out all night causing trouble?

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Death by Water, Kenzaburo Oe’s latest novel to be translated into English, practically begs you to read it as autobiography. Like The Changeling, as well as many other works not yet released in English, Death by Water is narrated in. . .

Jocelyne Saucier’s Twenty-One Cardinals is about the type of unique, indestructible, and often tragic loyalty only found in families. For a brief but stunningly mesmerizing 169 pages, Twenty-One Cardinals invited me in to the haunting and intimate world of the. . .

We know so very little; so little that what we think to be knowledge is hardly worth reckoning with at all; instead we ought to settle for being pleasantly surprised if, on the edge of things, against all expectations, our. . .

Many of Virginie Despentes’s books revolve around the same central idea: “To be born a woman [is] the worst fate in practically every society.” But this message is nearly always packaged in easy-to-read books that fill you with the pleasure. . .

Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s La Superba is appropriately titled after the Italian city of Genoa, where, after escaping the pressures of fame in his own country, the semi-autobiographical narrator finds himself cataloguing the experiences of its mesmerizing inhabitants with the intention. . .